From Earth I Rose
by SwiftSnowmane
Summary: He dropped his bow into the dust, fell to his knees, and wondered how many times a dead man could die. (Daryl with the Claimers.)


_"Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything._ " - C.S. Lewis

…

It was the darkest night of his life. That was no small claim, for a life as full of shadows as his own.

He ran, and ran, and ran, following a trail long gone cold, until the first pale light arrived, gray and drear. With burning lungs and bleeding heart he collapsed, alone upon a road, and breathed what he was sure was his last, dying breath.

There he remained, still as a sculpted headstone, at a place where rusted iron rails and abandoned road converged. Hours, minutes, years passed. Perhaps even winter came and went, left him with beard and shaggy hair frosted in rime, a man old before his time.

If he hadn't lost his wits and the better half of his soul, he might've heard, might've known. Might've even remembered verses, lines. Old tunes about devils and crossroads.

If his eyes hadn't been brimful of his last glimpse of her, maybe his keen hawk-sight would have caught the ones that came for him in the dawn. A band of what once might have been men, but what he suspected had always been monsters, long before the world had turned.

Their shadows danced and leapt around him, too dark for so early in the day. They came prowling and stalking and circling, seeking him out. Not wolves, for a wolf pack at least had some sense of family. Rabid dogs, maybe. Hellhounds, sniffing around, leading a lovestruck man to open doors better left closed.

Even if he'd had the wherewithal to ask the three questions, there was no need. He had only to look into their leader's dark eyes and he knew all the answers.

Men such as these would claim anything that wasn't nailed down, and then some.

He'd thought he'd left these shadows far, far behind. Thought they'd fled the day he put his dead brother down. Thought he'd seen the last of them go up in smoke back there in that shack. But maybe it was not the fire at all, but she and she alone who'd kept the demons at bay.

As ghosts from his own darkness they rose up, and tried to claim him, too. Tried to tear the wings right off his back. (As though he could fall any further from Grace.) If they could, he knew they'd leave nothing, not even his bones for the walkers and the worms to pick clean.

Not that it mattered. Not now. Didn't they know he was _nobody, nothing_?

She was everything. Everything was her.

 _You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon._

…

In the shadows of a moonlit night he saw her, eyes bright, mischief curving her lips, face aglow with fiery light. _We should burn it down_. In restless slumber upon a cold, dusty warehouse floor, he dreamed of her, a captive in some dark and menacing place, lost and lonely as himself. His arms remembered holding her; his body remembered being held. His arms encircled nothingness; his body curled in on itself as it had not since he was a beaten and bruised child.

He woke, and wondered that he could wake without his heart, could breathe with his chest a gaping wound.

At the breaking of dawn he stepped into the fresh air and heard her, in a wood thrush's warbling voice, singing him out of his waking dream. _Why don't you play some more? Keep singin'._ Soft light filtered through creaking branches, shining upon a fall of pale green moss. A breeze stirred and he saw her hair, wild wisps of white-gold turning to brightest flame beneath the rising sun. He remained longer than he knew he should in the clearing's still-cool shade, mossy strands caressing his face for a few, blessed breaths.

He followed the birdsong as one in a trance, as a mortally-wounded man walks to his doom.

Through the morning he hunted wild game, sensing a darkness at his back, waiting to make its claim. He shot a cottontail, the bolt striking clean and sure through fur and skin, flesh and bone. The shadow materialized, spoke words, claimed the game. It spoke again, and he heard her in all but name. Heard her beauty fall from a demon's lips, heard her sweetness sung from an unholy throat. _Must've been a good 'un_. His hand twitched, ready to slice, to spill blood; his fingers moved to the hilt of his knife.

It was only when the leader of the pack arrived and told him no, that he bristled, but let it go. He knew he hovered on some kind of edge. It had always been his nature to follow, even when the one he followed was the Devil himself.

He moved on, looking for better game, he told himself, but searching always for something else. He glimpsed her, finally, in a grove of slender, white birch, watched her darting from tree to tree, laughing all the while.

He paused, blinking, and wondered that saltwater could spill from a dead man's eyes.

In the lowering afternoon he shook the shadows for a spell, long enough to pick up a trail of his own. He followed a deer, tracked it through forest and field for many, listless miles, as the dead wander after their meat. _Keep on trackin'._ He paused at the edge of an open meadow, ready to take aim. His quarry raised its wary head in the whispering wind, and he saw her beautiful face, her wide, vulnerable eyes.

He dropped his bow into the dust, fell to his knees, and wondered how many times a dead man could die.

In the falling of the evening he moved as silent as a shadow in the midst of the demon pack. Beside a stretch of broken-down, rusted rails he saw her tear-stained, anguished face. _The little 'uns. They don't last too long out here_. He bent at the waist, crossbow pressing hard and unmerciful into the old scars on his back. There he glimpsed a flash of red, and saw her temping little mouth and sweet, loving smile, and his breath caught in his throat, just as it had the first time he'd seen her, standing pure and untouched beneath the golden sun on the faded grass in front of her farmhouse. _We'll lay in the lawn…_

He knelt and picked the patch of wild strawberries, digging it by its roots, a dead man with life in his hands.

Slow and careful, he opened a tattered old sack that had, once upon a time, held only man's unwanted things. Used-up, thrown away. Therein he placed his treasure. _Claimed._

…

It was the longest day of his life. Longer even than that strange and surreal day he'd found moonshine for a starry-eyed girl.

He lay beyond the margin of rail and road at the edge of the wooded camp, beneath a great oak tree. He lay beside the ashes of a dying fire, surrounded by shadows, staring into a darkening sky.

Everything in his once-steady gaze wavered, and transformed into her.

Everything in his once-steady hands trembled, and was not her.

He wished, more than ever, for bad moonshine, that he might finally go blind. _Nothin' worth seein' out there anymore anyway._

He was ready for the day to end. Ready for the demons to fight amongst themselves, number one less come morning. Ready for them to take him out this time. He welcomed the thought, as one already in his grave welcomes an end to the tedium of eternity.

He closed his eyes, and closed his fists. He held himself thus for minutes, hours, days—years, even. Dead beneath the soil, oblivious to all, devoid of all knowing. Moss could have grown over his unmarked grave, the earth could have opened and swallowed him whole, and he would not have known.

He lay there until he saw nothing, not even her visage. He lay there until heard nothing, not even her voice. He lay there until he was empty of all but the vibration of the earth. Until he felt nothing but damp leaves and cold ground, and the roots of the towering tree above him. Roots that must surely grow deep. For the live oak was ancient and strong. Not even the turning of the world had torn it down. Songbirds still roosted in its uppermost branches, squirrels still darted up and down its trunk. It rose far above the horrors of the world, its branches open wide. Protector, provider. Shelter for all.

Shadows stirred around him, slinking, muttering, growling, waiting for their chance. Soon enough they would close in. But he was not one of them. He belonged neither to heaven nor to hell. Not yet. Not while it remained, safe and hidden in the old plastic bag at his side. Beautiful, delicate, fragile, alive.

He had something now, something he'd claimed. Something to protect. _They'll be hungry when we find them._ The realization that he would lay himself down, would stand and fight for a fistful of strawberries struck him sharper than a belt buckle against bare skin.

 _You were made for how things are now._

From the shadows, he stirred. His fingers twitched, his fists unclenched. But he reached neither for his knife nor his bow—rather, he dug inward, deep into the void, into the bled-out, congealing wound. He reached inside and found the shredded, torn-up mess of his heart.

His hands remembered her hands. His blood remembered her blood. His bones remembered her bones.

He reached for her as a knight wandering forty days and forty nights in a desert-haze reaches for the overflowing Grail.

When he opened his eyes, his arms remained outstretched, forefingers and thumbs forming a little box against the darkness, as though he could claim a section of the sky.

He peered through his fingers, beyond the spreading branches, squinting into the night. There in the treetops, a lone evening star had risen. A single point of light.

 _I'm not gonna leave you._

From the cold, hard earth he rose. He slung his sack of treasure over his back and shouldered his bow. If he cast any shadows, or if any stirred to follow him, he paid no heed, but stood, silent and still beneath the stars, beneath the great oak tree. Beneath the wisps of pale moss, swaying in the breeze.

Into the carved-out hollow of his chest he drew his first, living breath, and walked on.

…

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A/N: Originally published on Ao3 and by request now reposted here.

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 ****** IMPORTANT REMINDER ******

 **Please respect my wishes NOT to discuss the show beyond the s5 msf. Thank you!** :)


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